Illegal sand mining refers to the act of mining sand without obtaining a sand mining license in violation of the provisions of the Mineral Resources Law, entering the mining areas planned by the state, mining areas of great value to the national economy and other people's mining areas without authorization, or mining specific minerals that are protected by the state.
On April 13, the Ministry of Public Security announced 10 typical cases of cracking down on crimes against the ecological environment in accordance with the law, including two cases of illegal sand mining. In order to reap huge profits, criminals take risks, ignore people's safety and ecological environment, and carry out illegal sand mining through various illegal means, such as unlicensed mining, over-range mining and illegal mining.
Two cases of illegal sand mining destroyed the local ecological environment
and one case of illegal sand mining by yuan Moucheng and others was detected by the public security organs in Zibo, Shandong Province, involving more than 40 illegal mining sites with a value of more than 30 million yuan. Relevant officials of
China Sandstone Association said that without expert demonstration and feasibility study, such illegal acts would destroy the local ecological environment, cause land desertification, seriously damage the interests of national mineral resources, and bring great losses to the environment and society.
Another case of illegal mining of sand and gravel in rivers and surrounding agricultural land (beaches) by Cao and others was detected by the public security organs of Baoji, Shaanxi Province, involving eight illegal mining sites, involving more than 17 million yuan.
"The harm of illegal sand mining is mainly in three aspects: first, it will destroy the embankment, seriously threaten the safety of dikes and other water conservancy and flood control facilities, and seriously endanger the safety of the people on both sides of the river; second, it will destroy the ecological environment, and the domestic waste discharged by the power and personnel used in illegal sand mining will seriously pollute the water body and directly threaten the drinking water safety of the surrounding residents.". Sand mining operations will also cause turbidity in the surrounding water, reduce transparency, increase sulfate concentration and pH value, etc., which will have an immeasurable impact on aquatic animals and plants; third, it will destroy the waterway and endanger navigation safety, causing accidents on the water. Relevant person in charge introduced.
Large-scale collection of natural sand and gravel is decreasing
. Through two cases, let's take a look at the current situation of the sand and gravel industry. The scale of infrastructure construction
in China is huge. As an indispensable, irreplaceable and largest raw material for construction projects such as buildings, roads, bridges and water conservancy, the output and consumption of sand and gravel are huge, accounting for about half of the global consumption of sand and gravel.
According to statistics, in 2022, China will produce 17.42 billion tons of sand and gravel.
"In the early years, China's sand and gravel basically came from the collection of natural sand and gravel such as rivers and lakes." Relevant officials said that with the continuous expansion of infrastructure construction in China, the increasing demand for sand and gravel, and the increasing depletion of natural sand and gravel, in the past decade, machine-made sand and gravel has replaced natural sand and gravel and become the main source of sand and gravel for construction, accounting for about 80% of the total sand and gravel market.
"The current sand and gravel industry has changed from the original natural sand and gravel collection industry to a large-scale industrialized mechanism sand and gravel manufacturing industry, which is a huge strategic emerging industry attached to natural stone resources with a total output value of over trillion yuan." Relevant person in charge said.
In recent years, the price of sand and gravel in China has fluctuated greatly. Around
2017, after large-scale collection, natural sand and gravel are decreasing day by day.
Later, in order to standardize sand mining operations and strengthen the protection of the ecological environment, the collection of sand and gravel in rivers and lakes was prohibited, and the mechanism sand and gravel production enterprises with backward technology, chaotic management, small scale and serious pollution were closed down.
According to the relevant person in charge, the production capacity of sand and gravel representing the advanced level of large-scale industrialization mechanism has not been released in time, resulting in a significant reduction in sand and gravel production at that time, short-term imbalance in regional sand and gravel supply, and a sharp rise in sand and gravel prices. Under
multiple factors, sand and gravel have attracted wide attention
from the society. In 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 10 departments jointly issued "Several Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Mechanized Sand and Gravel Industry" (hereinafter referred to as "Opinions"). Machine-made sand and gravel production has gradually changed from simple and scattered manual or semi-mechanical workshops to standardized and large-scale factories, but the machine-made sand and gravel industry is still facing outstanding problems such as weak quality assurance ability, unreasonable industrial structure, low level of green development, and imbalance between local supply and demand.
The Opinion covers various measures to ensure market supply, accelerate technological innovation, improve quality, optimize industrial structure, promote industrial integration, promote green development and enhance intrinsic safety.
In order to stabilize the supply of sand and gravel market, maintain the overall stable price and promote the healthy and orderly development of the industry, the following year, 15 departments and units such as the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy and Orderly Development of the Sand and Gravel Industry (hereinafter referred to as the Guiding Opinions).
The Guiding Opinions clearly put forward a series of measures and suggestions on promoting the high-quality development of the mechanism sand and gravel industry, strengthening the comprehensive regulation and utilization of river sand mining, gradually and orderly promoting the mining and utilization of sea sand, and actively promoting the alternative utilization of sand sources.
"After the promulgation of these two national documents, all parts of the country have successively promulgated relevant regional industrial policies.". At the same time, China Sandstone Association took the lead in integrating resources from all sides, leading leading enterprises in the industry and upstream and downstream industries, and carried out the work of green mine construction, scientific and technological innovation, standard formulation and so on. Relevant person in charge told reporters in an interview. The introduction and implementation of these
policies and measures have played a huge role in promoting the transformation, upgrading, high-quality and healthy and orderly development of the sand and gravel industry.
Establish traceability mechanism to curb illegal sand
mining from the use side. "At present, China's large-scale and modern sand and gravel production capacity has been fully able to meet the needs of infrastructure construction in China, and the market price is also in the process of rational regression." Relevant person in charge said.
"Driven by huge profits is the root cause of illegal sand mining," said the relevant person in charge. In recent years, the price of sand and gravel has remained at a high level, while the cost of illegal sand mining is low, the profit margin is huge, and the legal concept of criminals is weak, which leads to the repeated prohibition of illegal sand mining.
In order to better curb illegal sand mining and effectively safeguard national ecological security, the relevant responsible person suggested that we should crack down on illegal sand mining from the following four aspects:
Give targeted punishment measures and intensity. The amount of penalty should be determined according to the multiple of illegal sand mining sales.
It is suggested to establish a traceability mechanism for the use of sand and gravel to curb illegal sand mining from the use end, and the relevant construction authorities should also strengthen the punishment management for the use of illegal sand and gravel by building materials production units and construction units.
At the same time, in order to better strengthen the management, it is suggested that the river sand mining license should be integrated into the unified management platform of the national mineral resources mining license, and the planning, design and sand mining operators of river sand mining (including river dredging sand mining) should be determined according to the way of bidding, auction and hanging.
In addition, it is suggested to continue to strengthen the linkage of departments and enhance the joint efforts of work. It is suggested that public security, procuratorial, water conservancy, natural resources, ecological environment, forestry and other departments further improve the system of joint meetings, information sharing, clue transfer, analysis and reporting, and form a normal cooperation mechanism; We will continue to regularly organize and carry out "special rectification actions for sand and gravel", investigate and punish illegal sand and gravel yards and processing sites according to law, shut down and ban illegal sand and gravel processing sites according to law, confiscate sand and gravel mined and illegal income, and impose fines. If a crime is constituted, criminal responsibility shall be investigated according to law.
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